


Ray's Story

by Ultra_chrome



Category: due South
Genre: Dialogue-Only, Post-Call of the Wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra_chrome/pseuds/Ultra_chrome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hi. My name’s Ray and apparently…no. I am an alcoholic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ray's Story

**Author's Note:**

> Ray goes to AA. I’ve never been to a meeting, just seen movie versions, so if I got it wrong, feel free to beat me repeatedly about the head. With something soft, please. Yes, I’m a wuss.

“Uh… Hi. My name’s Ray and apparently…no. I _am_ an alcoholic. I…uh… It’s a long story, but I guess it is for everybody, so… here goes. I’ll try to give you the short version.  
  
I’m a cop. Mostly undercover stuff. So my marriage went down the toilet, and I drank a fair bit after that, but I came good.   
  
I came good ‘cause I took a job pretending to be another cop. They gave me this freaky Mountie as a partner. Don’t ask. Just… he was the other guy’s partner for a whole bunch of reasons that don’t… _matter._ They don’t matter.  
  
So this Mountie, he uh… he used to lick stuff and believe in everyone, right? He believed in _me_ a whole lot, and I … I needed that, yeah. But I don’t think it was really good for me, you know?   
  
It was pretty lonely at the start. No friends, not when I was supposed to be this other guy. No wife to come home to, not even to fight. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t really go out and try to find someone. The whole not being me thing wasn’t easy when I didn’t know who I was anyway.  
  
Then Fraser… the Mountie… he sorta adopted me. We started hanging out all the time. Watching hockey, eating pizza, movies. The whole thing. And he doesn’t drink, so I didn’t either. Plus, he was always doing stupid stuff on the job that kept nearly getting us killed.   
  
The whole nearly dying thing really… we bonded. We got so close I didn’t know where I ended and he started. It was like… I was nobody, he made me somebody and when the other guy came back and I didn’t have to be the new me anymore I didn’t know who I was. All over again.  
  
We were right in the middle of a big case when it happened. That’s a whole long story on its own. But we ended up getting thrown out of a plane in the middle of the frozen North.   
  
Fraser grew up there. It’s his home. He’s this whole different person up there. Happy.  
  
So we crack the case and all those reasons that don’t matter, the reasons he was in Chicago, they went away. They said he could work anywhere he wanted.   
  
He uh… he took a transfer to some place I can’t even pronounce. Lots of u’s in it. But before he started up there, we went on an adventure. There was this guy called Franklin and he went looking for the Northwest Passage and he died. We were looking for his hand. I don’t know why his hand was more important than the rest of him, but…  
  
So we go out into the big white world, where you freeze your ass off in the very real way if you’re not careful, you know? And Fraser, he’s all like looking after me. Not… he didn’t baby me or anything. Just made sure I was eating enough and wouldn’t let me out of his sight, but he pushed me, too. He made me learn how to do the sled thing. Tack up the dogs, the whole ten yards.   
  
I could live up there in the snow all by myself now, which is what he was trying to do, I get that. And the whole time we talked about stuff. About me not wanting to be a cop anymore and him missing the Inuit villages and stuff.   
  
It got… comfortable. Like old slippers. We didn’t find that hand and I didn’t find out who I was and when we got back to civilisation, Fraser just went and rented this little cabin and said, “How do you like our new home?”   
  
I freaked, right there. I never said I wanted to live up there. We never talked about that. I knew he wasn’t coming back to Chicago. I knew that. I just didn’t know he expected me to stay up there. And… I got scared. I mean, it couldn’t look good, two guys alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere just because they wanted to be, you know.   
  
So I came home. I came home and I wasn’t anybody special and I didn’t have anybody else to be and I just… I made friends with the bottle. And then I started hanging out with the bottle too much and I crashed my car. My baby.   
  
She was pretty banged up, but still running and I had this gash on my head. I didn’t feel it. I just knew I’d fu… screwed up, ‘cause…my car, you know? And I drove to Frannie’s. That’s her right there. She used to be my sister when I was the other guy. Now she’s my best friend. She made me come here.   
  
And, I wanna do this right. I… Frannie says I’m someone special all on my own and if she’s gonna give me a compliment, I’m gonna take it, ‘cause it don’t happen much. So, yeah. I’m gonna do this thing. Get sober and be someone special. Be me.  
  
So yeah, uh… that’s my story. Thanks for listening.”

 


End file.
